


Overhand

by museicalitea



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Holding Hands, M/M, Non-Chronological
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-24 05:02:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17698145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/museicalitea/pseuds/museicalitea
Summary: The months slip away, turn into years, and Konoha learns that what doesn’t show in Sarukui’s face always shows in his hands. Konoha thinks he could study them, do a presentation, write an essay:There they are, wide and broad-knuckled and knotty in the heat. Do you see the blood, running through his veins, and the way it gets hot and goes raised and blue when he’s mad? Do you see his fingertips, bent out of shape with every point he wins for the team? Do you know the callouses of his palm, or the ridge of the blister where he holds his pen too hard?Do you know these hands the way I do?





	Overhand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lollipop_Panda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lollipop_Panda/gifts).



> HAPPY VALENTINES LOLLIPOP_PANDA!!!! I was delighted to see you are such a big fan of FUKURODANI AND KONOHA, THE BEST TEAM AND THE BEST BOY!!!!!!! YOU HAVE SUCH EXCELLENT TASTE :D So here is a gift for your Valentine's and a big fingers-crossed that Fukurodani wins Nationals so they can prove they really are the best in the entire world <3

It starts at the end of their first year, with a ball bouncing cleanly off his fingertips and lacing through the air, and a broad hand that comes to meet it.

Sarukui is a little taller, a little stronger, a little faster than Konoha, and hard to read, with that funny cat-mouthed smile and a lilt in his eyes like he’s always having a laugh, even when he insists in dismay that he isn’t. He hits a powerful spike and is generous with swapping the contents of their _bento_ and always gets tangled up in Komi’s mischief, which of course means that Konoha does too, until somehow they’ve become friends. Good friends. And he doesn’t stand out—much like Konoha himself—until he really, really does.

Sunlight slips through the windows, burnished in the late afternoon when it resounds to meet the other side, and Sarukui’s hands are firm as he slaps Konoha a massive, joyous high-ten.

 

* * *

 

Sarukui falls into step beside Konoha as they’re leaving the school the day after the third-years farewell the club, in the twilight of the late afternoon. It’s January and Konoha’s cold, even buried in his thick scarf and with gloved hands shoved in his pockets, but Sarukui looks as unbothered by the icy air as he is by anything else. _It’s lucky for some,_ Konoha mutters, and Sarukui laughs, a sound easy as his loping strides.

A week ago, the entire city was before them, shining and glittering so close, all they had to do was reach out, dive forward, and they could touch it.

Now, there is just the street outside the school, barren trees, the streetlights on early. Everything is a little heavier than it was a week ago. His bag, filled with extra homework and entrance exam prep. The air, pressing in lacklustre and grey, like it knows the best part is over and that decisions loom prescient before him. His muscles, like they haven’t recovered, and maybe they haven’t, after he pushed himself so hard along with his team, reaching for that goal one last time. Sarukui’s presence by his side.

 

* * *

 

When it’s all over, Konoha keeps tearing up too hard to see straight. He wishes there was something more he could have done, something more he could have been, one more skill he could cover their gaps with. It stings. It’s frustrating. He thinks about that last ball echoing down behind him, and thinks about it all the way from the stadium to the restaurant where they’re eating, and he composes himself only to see Sarukui place a fifth piece of _karaage_ on his plate.

“Go on,” says Sarukui, pinching a piece of tofu off Konoha’s plate as he spoke. “Don’t wanna let it get cold, right?”

The karaage looks good. As good as the kind Sarukui’s mom makes, the kind he brings into school and takes to Konoha’s classroom to share with him on those auspicious days. And Sarukui lingers there, over Konoha’s plate for a second. His hands are big, broad-knuckled, and after the exertion of the game the veins are raised with still-hot blood. If Konoha moves his hand, they’d be touching. They hugged, after the match; huddled together, all the third years, for the final time.

But Konoha trusts Sarukui’s hands in a way different to everyone and everything else. Those are the hands that believed in him the first time he tried to toss.

 

* * *

 

“Hey,” says Sarukui, standing just forward of Konoha’s line of vision. “Not going home yet?”

They’re walking in the opposite direction to Konoha’s train, and he curses inside for being too distracted to notice. But he just shrugs, and squeezes his fists inside his coat pockets, where Sarukui can’t see them. “Just thinking. Feels weird that we won’t be going back, huh?”

“Ah, you know Bokuto, next week he’ll be bounding back into practice same as ever and dragging us in after him.”

Konoha can’t bite back a laugh at that, because it’s true. Coach Yamiji won’t even bat an eyelid, and even though Akaashi will lecture Bokuto, he’ll be tossing for him in minutes.

Sarukui smiles then: a big, genuine smile, with his teeth showing. It’s kind of lopsided and a sets his dimples, and it makes Konoha’s heart skip a beat.

“What’s so funny?” he says.

“You finally laughed. I was starting to think I’d have to sneak attack you, or, you know, carry you home in a fireman’s lift if I wanted you to laugh again.”

“Dude, seriously? Do I look that bummed?”

“Not really. Maybe? You’re just… less _chill_ than normal.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be the chill one? You get in trouble for looking too chill.”

“Ah, yeah, need to work on that…”

 

* * *

 

The months slip away, turn into years, and Konoha learns that what doesn’t show in Sarukui’s face always shows in his hands. Konoha thinks he could study them, do a presentation, write an essay:

There they are, wide and broad-knuckled and knotty in the heat. Do you see the blood, running through his veins, and the way it gets hot and goes raised and blue when he’s mad? Do you see his fingertips, bent out of shape with every point he wins for the team? Do you know the callouses of his palm, or the ridge of the blister where he holds his pen too hard?

_Do you know these hands the way I do?_

There is force in those hands, enough to tear a hole in the court if that guy wanted to. Precision, too: the exacting way he wheels around his MP3 clickwheel, or how he always stops to pick wildflowers one stem at a time from the embankments going home, _for my mom,_ he says with a smile that means nothing more and nothing less than just that.

And gentleness, when he comes into Konoha’s classroom and hands over his _bento_ with a knowing twinkle in his eye because _my mom made karaage last night and they’re really good_ , and the way he lets it go so easily—

With the warm flutter in Konoha’s chest and the easy smile playing about Sarukui’s face, the genuine one, there’s nothing really left to say.

 

* * *

 

“So, Mr Chill, are _you_ gonna go along when our inimitable captain drags you along to practice?”

“Do you even know what inimitable means?”

“Of course I do, you know Bokuto’s going to ask me if he’s using it right one day!”

Sarukui snorts, and Konoha grins wide.

“Well, I guess I gotta go to practice if Bokuto needs an extra thesaurus around.” Sarukui tilts his head. “I mean, as long as I get to drag you along with me.”

“Me?”

“Yeah.” Sarukui extends his hand, and his voice takes on a timbre Konoha’s never heard before. “You. Gotta have a partner in crime, right?”

 

* * *

 

He finds himself searching for those hands, that guy, a steady runup while no one’s looking — because when it’s him, no one knows what to expect, so why should Bokuto have all the fun?

When they high-five, the victory rings as clear as the first time. Ecstatic, on top of the world, celebrating a point that is _theirs,_ a point that only they can pull off.

Playing opposite Bokuto, Sarukui is a shadow. Bokuto is the brightest light in the stadium and Sarukui falls from notice. Konoha knows the pair of them are much alike—no one notices them until they vault themselves into the spotlight, and then no one can look away. Invisible and covering all the gaps, every blind spot, they are the gears that keep the Fukurodani system going; they are the fuel that lets it continue to work.

This moment in the sun won’t last. It never does. Bokuto will get the good part, right at the end. But it’s the thrill of the chase that excites Konoha, building up to that moment, showing off everything they’ve got for the thrill and the fun.

And at the end, the victory tastes so, so sweet.

 

* * *

 

“What, someone to send you tosses if Akaashi pretends to ignore us?”

“Someone I want to play volleyball with.”

“Just volleyball?”

“Well… where are we gonna spend time together if we’re not at volleyball practice?”

“You know, there’s an _oden_ place near here. We could start there.”

And on impulse—like lightning, like the way he can’t help but gravitate to him in a match because _this_ is the person who he wants to send the toss over and over again—Konoha unfurls his hand from his pocket and reaches out to grab Sarukui’s hand.

“C’mon. It’s cold as balls out here,” he says—even though when Sarukui grips his hand tight, it’s like the warmest rice and hot soup flooding through and filling him up.

And Sarukui goes with him, matches his strides to Konoha’s shorter, faster steps, and his hand—calloused, firm, _warm_ —keeps its grip the whole way.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
